The invention relates to outdoor furniture and is particularly addressed to a seat for use in parks and other public gathering places.
The park bench is a familiar feature of outdoor gathering places. For generations the elderly, the young, the wealthy, and the impecunious have all found a Sunday respite on the park bench. But notwithstanding its long and universal acceptance, the park bench has its annoying features, which the public has long had to bear and has come to accept as inevitable.
For example, groups of benches are typically arranged in a straight line along a walkway or in a circle around a statue, flower bed or the like. In such arrangements the focus of the bench sitter's attention is predetermined by the landscape architect, giving no opportunity for user involvement. Some persons prefer to face other people. Some prefer to avoid them. Some persons prefer to face toward the sun. Others prefer to face away. The typical Vitorian park bench cannot accommodate individual desires in this regard. In addition, the forced side-by-side seating tends to make conversation awkward and strained. It hardly encourages intimate conversation. When the bench sitter is alone, however, the bench tends to attract unwanted conversationalists. Undisturbed solitude is virtually impossible.